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The Katukina of Rio Biá (Amazonas State – Brazil): History, social organization and cosmology.

Abstract

The thesis is divided into four parts. The first three are conceived as an increase in the extent to the individual, i.e. the relationships studied will gradually become more and more “intimate” if one can say, to give us an image that I hope as complete as possible of the social organization Katukina. First, I will be interested in understanding the historical events that have been experienced by the Katukina since their first appearances in traveller stories and in relation to them, compare them, how the Katukina approached them and how they tell them today. This will in fact pose the problem of Katukina’s relationship with others in the broad sense, whether they are other American or other white people. The dynamics of the social organisation system and the transformations of the Katukina-others will show a system based on a continuum vision of relations between the different populations, a particular positioning of the Katukina on it, with a dynamic of transformation that justifies movements on this continuum and whose engine seems to be what Kelly calls “white become” (2005). The second part is, in some way, an “internalization” of the reflections of the first part where this time it is not the relations with the other external ones that will be discussed, but the dynamics of the system within all the Katukina villages. This will lead us first to a reflection on the “sub-groups” in several populations in the region, such as Kanamari and Arawá language populations, and on the problem of their existence among the Katukina. Then I will be interested in the Katukina political system and will make some assumptions about the very origin of Katukina as a whole, which we will see that they are a form of bipartition, which can hypothetically link to the dynamics of relations with the various American groups and white people. The third part is still a dive into Katukina’s “privacy” with the study this time interpersonal relationships and relationships of kinship. This will require a study of terminology, relationships between individuals and the factional system to which each individual belongs. This is the aim of finding what seems to be the means of production of parents in the Katukina and which will highlight the central position of a basic unit of Katukina society: the couple of spouses/wife. This part will be concluded by reflecting on the Katukina person who will highlight the relative discontinuity between the construction of the person and the construction of the parents, the first being the semantic domain of the -wara concept and the second of the -wayan. Finally, the fourth part will take, in a way, this movement towards the “intimate” backwards and following the thread of the cohabitation of the concepts of -wara and -wayan will show how their applications extend beyond the social organization Katukina, touching all fields of cosmology and the world of supernature, not only in relations between the non-human populations of this universe, but also in the relations and relations of humans, katukina, with these populations (Ritual and Shamanism). This last part is also an opening to future research because, as I would show, questions still remain unanswered and require, call, the collection of missing data..